Aphex Twin Tears Into Kanye West, "He Tried to Rip Me Off"

Aphex Twin is about to release his first album in 13 years, SYRO, on September 23 and thanks to a lengthy publicity interview with Pitchfork, we've got a juicy anecdote about Kanye West apparently trying to rip off the electronic musician.

Kanye sampled Aphex Twin's 'Avril 14th' on the track 'Blame Game' from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, however, things didn't exactly run smoothy. Aphex Twin, real name Richard D. James, said he was dismayed after hearing the sample's quality and even offered to re-do it for the rapper. However, Kanye's people not only failed to take up the offer but also claimed ownership of the sample.

When questioned about the issue, James told Pitchfork, "Is it a sample? I actually don't know what it ended up being in the end, I'm so slack. I know that he tried to f*cking rip me off and claim that he'd written it, and they tried to get away with not paying. I was really helpful, and when they first sent it to me, I was like, "Oh, I can re-do that for you, if you like,' because they'd sampled it really badly and time-stretched it and there was loads of artifacts. I was like, 'I'll just replay it for you at that speed if you want." And they totally didn't even say "hello" or "thanks," they just replied with, "It's not yours, it's ours, and we're not even asking you any more."

If you're interested, the original Aphex Twin song appeared on his 2001 album Drukqs, while the sample used in Kanye's west hits at about 1.39 in the clip below.